SAN
2009
Sports THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Volleyball loses to Missouri The Tigers' high-powered offense was too much for Kansas. VOLLEYBALL | 5B
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2009
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PAGE 1B
COMMENTARY
Rock Chalk cultural wonder
NO LONGER IN THE AIR
When claimed as a home, Kansas hardly invites flattering remarks. More often than not, it provides fodder for jokes — which are never as original or as clever as the teller seems to think.
"How's Toto?" Dead.
"Say hi to Dorothy for me!" Also dead, but ok.
"Hey, did you know that they did a study once, and Kansas is actually flatter than a pancake?" No, I didn't. But I'm glad they finally looked in to that. Serious business, the topography of break fast foods.
"Did they not teach you about gravity in school either? It's just a theory too, you know." Of course they did. I mean, it's right there in The Book of Job.
Perhaps in an effort to give Kanssas ammunition with which to defend against such attacks, the Kansas Sampler Foundation is putting together a list of The Eight Cultural Wonders of Kansas. Voters have until October 20 to whittle the 20 finalists down to eight.
Edited by Jonathan Hermes
As true as those criticisms may be, they also miss the point. The Rock Chalk Chant — or any cultural tradition, for that matter — doesn't derive its significance from any tangibly practical source. Rather, it's about a sense of communal identity. Undeniably, the chant is an integral part of a Kansas identity for many. It's a part of that identity which, amidst the derision, Kansans can take a measure of pride in.
No disrespect to the other 19, but there's one obvious choice: The Rock Chalk Chant. Now, I'm sure there's a charming local story behind residents of Wetmore putting shoes on a tree, but I sure as hell don't know it. Neither do I have the slightest clue as to why a summer swim in Garden City ought to be more culturally significant than doing so anywhere else. In fact, other than the Rock Chalk Chant, none of the finalists seem particularly relevant to anyone outside the locale in which they exist. Which is fine. Local color is noteworthy because it's local, not in spite of that fact.
But the Rock Chalk Chant, on top of its local appeal, means something nationwide. It invokes images of a basketball powerhouse, an emerging football program and as passionate and devoted a fan base as any in the country.
Granted, the Rock Chalk Chant's notoriety is somewhat limited to those with at least a casual interest in sports. And sports, one could further argue, are ultimately frivolous concerns, hardly the sort of thing a state should take pride in. So our basketball team is better than yours; we still can't fund our schools.
"The Wizard of Oz" jokes won't stop anytime soon. That's fine. Let the would-be comedians have their fun. They won't be laughing when the seconds plummet toward zero, and a familiar chant signifies their team's pending defeat.
Ryan Waggoner/KANSAN
Senior running back Jake Sharp runs the ball against Northern Colorado. Sharp has rushed for at least 100 yards in both games played this season. Kansas has run more this season than in the past
Run, not pass, moves offense
Sharp, running backs carry team early in the season
BY JAYSON JENKS
jjenks@kansan.com
Senior running back Jake Sharp sat at a desk with reporters posing questions clustered in a semicircle around him. It was a normal snapshot from a Tuesday press conference.
There were recorders, cameras, and a quarterback?
"Jake, do you think you're going to continue your streak of 100-yard games?" Kansas quarterback Todd Reesing playfully asked.
Sharp laughed, leaned back in his chair, smiled and then proceeded to answer his quarterback's question.
Road is just a comic, isn't he?" said Sharp, who has rushed for at least 100 yards in both games this season. "But as long as need be, I think I can shoulder the load on that."
So far this season, that's exactly what Sharp has done.
Follow Kansan football writer Jayson Jenks at twitter.com/ JaysonJenks.
With defensive attempts to limit the pass, Sharp — not Reesing and his wide receivers — has developed into Kansas' most consistent play maker.
Reeing hasn't played poorly
this season, but he hasn't posted the video game offensive numbers that became the norm the last two seasons. For coach Mark Mangino, there's a simple reason for that.
in there and throwing for 400 or 500 yards," Mangino said. "If teams are going to play us that way, it's great. We can run the ball. And we will."
That's a distant message from last season when Kansas, Sharp included, struggled to run the ball. Much of the offensive workload.
"They don't want Todd coming
then, fell onto the shoulders of Reesing and his ability to move the ball through the air.
The Jayhawks rushed for 254 yards after two games last season. They've rushed for 583 yards already this year.
"As a team that, over the last four years, has thrown more than we've run, to come out this year and run more than we've passed has been awesome," Reesing said. "Down the road, that's going to only help our pass game."
"They don't want Todd coming in there and throwing 400 or 500 yards."
MARK MANGINO Football coach
In the season opener, Northern Colorado routinely dropped eight defenders in coverage, almost baiting Kansas to move the ball on the ground.
With Reesing and a talented cast of returning play makers at wide receiver, Kansas' passing attack was supposed to highlight the offensive attack. Apparently opposing defenses heard similar messages.
On the road against UTEP last week, Kansas' pass offense remained bottled up for most of the game.
"It kind of is a direct challenge to the entire football program with them thinking we can't run the ball," freshman running back Toben Opurum said. "But I think we've proven ourselves that we can."
The biggest beneficiary of Kansas' continued use of the run game is Sharp, who split time with two other running backs during non-conference
play last season.
dimensional now."
Statistically, Kansas' offense is thriving once again this season, averaging 561.5 yards per game.
"It kind of is a direct challenge to the entire football program with them thinking we can't run the ball."
the big 12 with 227 rushing yards this season.
TOBEN OPURUM
Freshman running back
Still, there seems to be a sense that the offense could — and should — perform at an even higher level. In their 34-7 victory on Saturday, the Jayhawks missed scoring chances, leaving, as players and Mangino said, "points on
Offensive coordinator Ed Warriner said that while defenses are paying closer attention to the pass, he thinks a more sufficient reason for the rushing success is that the Jayhawks are simply a better running team than last season.
"It's a whole different mindset for him and for us offensively this season," Warriner said. "We're two
the field."
"That is my fault for not getting the ball where it needs to be sometimes," Reesing said. "It's encouraging though that you put up 570 yards of offense and walk away a little disappointed."
True. Reesing
wasn't as crisp and efficient as past performances, but he didn't need to be. That's the appeal of having a solid and productive run game.
"We're not going to try and force things that aren't there." Reesing said. "If teams are going to let us run the ball, then we're going to run the ball. That's just the way the offense works."
- Edited by Jonathan Hermes
SWIMMING & DIVING
Junior overcomes absence of training facilities at home
Iuliai Kuzhil, Cherkasy,
Ukraine, junior swimmer has
BY ANDREW TAYLOR ataylor@kansan.com
fought through less-than-ideal circumstances to become one of the Jayhawk's biggest threats in the pool.
Kuzhil
Nowhere is this fact more evident than
in last year's postseason competi
tion. Kuzhil was one of only three Jayhawk swimmers and divers to compete at the 2009 NCAA championships, where she narrowly missed the finals by only .21 seconds.
She accomplished all of this after entering last season out of shape. Kuzhil had not swam competitively for two years leading up to her arrival at Kansas. This was not her own fault, though, as it is easily traced back to her home in the Ukraine.
Though Kuzhil didn't begin swimming at a highly competitive
Follow Kansan swimming writer Andrew Taylor at twitter.com/ andrew_taylor11.
level until the age of 12, she was first recruited to a local swim team when she was six years old. A lifelong love of water made the pool a natural fit for Kuzhil. In her first ever backstroke race she outpaced the competition and earned a first place victory. As a prize for this
At the age of 12 her real training began. From this time onward her practices escalated from about an hour a day, five days a week, to two hours a day, six days a week. This led to more intense competition for a while, but eventually she ran into problems with financial aid and was limited to competing
accomplishment Kuzhil received a small toy, which she points to as one of the key reasons for her interest in competitive swimming. This interest was so intense that it survived six years of relatively non-competitive swimming.
inside her own city. Kuzhill stated her belief that this inhibited her growth as an athlete because the level of competition was not as high enough to push her to get better. This along with the fact that the pool in her hometown closes during the summer months led to her slow start at KU.
"The last couple of years I didn't compete outside my city, so I didn't get to compete on the higher level I needed to grow as an athlete," Yoshil said.
SEE SWIMMING ON PAGE 4B